Ascension
by Ashe Romeo
Summary: A more in-depth look at Ai, in the midst of her retribution against the village. One-shot.


The night was hers.

Clean air came rushing to her fingers as she finally broke through the surface that had seemed unattainable for so long. The realization that she was _through_ gave her hope against the wickedly oppressive silence, and desperately, she pushed and clawed against the freshly-turned earth. The certainty of what was to come throbbed within her, and she felt it beating with insistent force, pumping a parody of life through her very dead veins.

_Mine,_ said that darkest heart of vengeance, whispering like a lover in the cold, stifling, smothering darkness that was her tomb. The night is _mine._

She was out.

Shaking very violently, yet unable to shake off the terrible finality of death, she pushed and clawed and scraped her way up until she was finally free of the earth that had held her too tightly. She had woken in that awful silence, woken and simply _known _that this night belonged to her. There wasn't a need for that voice in her head, for the heart that beat for retribution. She simply knew.

It was time.

The moon was bright. She raised her hands up before her face, and saw the ruin that had befallen them. Four of her nails had torn off in her struggle to rise from the grave. Blood congealed and streamed down her fingers. She could feel the wound on her face, where the rock had struck her, but she simply let the bandages fall away.

Let them see. Let them see the tainted fruit of their brutality.

Wobbling unsteadily, she let her torso flop backwards, in an impossible angle. Her wrists doubling about, her arms twisting to support her own weight, she opened her lungs and screamed into the night. It was the first noise she made, the first thing she did to break the awful, awful silence, and it felt _good. _

Breathing now. Breathing _air, _real _air, _air that broke past the dirt in her throat and her nose. Preparing. Her maimed fingers burrowed into the earth.

She screamed again, and it was perfection. The force of the cry sliced the night in half, and that dark heart in her, the one that beat for vengeance seemed to _relish _it. She had been denied her own death rattle in that premature burial, and now she was to have it. Oh yes, _now she was to have it._

"What the hell is going on here?"

The heart beat faster, faster. It had begun.

She raised her head forward and crossed her eyes to see who had interrupted her. A cold, laughless smile befell her visage as she beheld the men who had put her to death. Men who, as boys, had delighted in tormenting her throughout her girlhood. Had she even _had _a girlhood? She could not discern if those memories were even hers. Everything was meaningless now, in the wake of this wickedly beating heart.

"It…it can't be," one said in disbelief, seeing the hole in the ground, seeing her laying there. So they were catching on. Too late.

With easy grace, she slid up to her feet. She went to them in the slow, purposeful manner of corpses, and wished them to be torn to bits.

It happened smoothly.

She stood very still and watched as arms tore from sockets, as eyes exploded and as hearts came impossibly tearing through the skin. Their guilty blood, like rain, came down, and she stayed among them, relishing. None of them had the opportunity to scream, and she counted that unfortunate. But the night was _hers. _There would be screaming, yet.

She began to walk into the village, and all too soon, the sound of a baby crying alerted her towards a hut, not too far away from her grave. She stood outside for a moment, looking in and realizing that this was the harlot who could not produce milk for her child, in the midst of the famine. That little brat was worth her life, it seemed.

She wished for the hut to catch aflame.

It happened smoothly.

The harlot began to scream with panic, and so did her brat. She tried to escape, but something heavy from the kitchen collapsed downwards in the fire, conveniently pinning her where she lay. Her tears evaporated in the scorching air.

She stood outside of the swiftly-burning hut, the intense heat of the flames bathing her like a salve. The woman who was trapped inside saw her, and her cries heightened to a new escalation of raw terror. She began to beg. First, for her life. Then, for the life of her child.

She watched her catch on fire and smiled very contentedly as mother and child began to burn. The first agonized, then final shrieks alerted others in the village.

She wished for _their _huts to burn too.

It happened smoothly.

She spread her arms out behind her and walked deeper into the village as the fires spread swiftly, like plague. Oh, the night was _hers. _They were suffering for their brutality, all right, they were suffering _dearly _for their brutality.

The screams that pervaded the air were as music to her ears, and she turned delicately, round and round on her bare feet, dancing. Her fingers opened and closed. Her hair streamed about her like dark banners. She could hear them beg. She could hear them scream. She could even hear them curse her, in the midst of all this.

The heart that was not a heart pumped the sweet elixir of revenge, causing something akin to warmth to flood down to her frozen limbs. This was no _humanly_ feeling. Oh no.

_Hers._ All hers.

And down below the scorched and bleeding sky, among the frolicking flames and the cries of the dying, in the midst of the massacre and the jubilant throb of her satisfaction…

She began to sing.


End file.
